- Email: [email protected]
Towards a political ecology of irrigation efficiency and productivity
Agricultural Water Management 108 (2012) 1–2
Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect
Agricultural Water Management journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/agwat
Preface
Towards a political ecology of irrigation efficiency and productivity
The provenance of this issue stems from an ICID.UK seminar entitled “Towards a political ecology of irrigation and water use efficiency and productivity” held in November 2008. One reason for calling the meeting arose out of my concerns that ‘irrigation efficiency’ as a term, and as a means to reflect on water management, was being marginalised (Willardson et al., 1994; Seckler, 1996; Perry, 2007; Jensen, 2007) suggesting that irrigation efficiency has limited utility for irrigation management and should be dropped from usage. Yet the intention of the London meeting, and now, is not to refute the idea we should treat irrigation efficiency with scepticism or to form a consensus on how scientists and policy-makers should address efficiency and productivity. On the contrary, the objective is to reveal the diversity of views within the seemingly mundane area of irrigation efficiency and productivity and to link these to political and societal concerns over resource governance. While there were no calls for contributors to write on ‘the political ecology of irrigation efficiency’, perhaps nearest is the paper in this issue by Boelens and Vos. This, plus a lack of trustworthy field metrics on efficiency (compared to modelled and estimated figures), guides the somewhat hesitant title of this preface. Nevertheless, one can still characterise this collection of papers as a ‘political ecology’ analysis in the form of Rocheleau’s (2008) ‘critical perspectives’ characterisation of Blaikie and Brookfield’s (1987) work comprising the accommodation of methods, scales, objectives and actors in a social and biophysical study of science, power relations, politics and resource theory applied to questions of environmental governance. For example, the two paradigms of irrigation efficiency reflect the unresolved scientific and methodological nature of the debate. The paper by Pereira et al. supports ‘effective irrigation efficiency’ arguments that water losses are recaptured in the basin, with the risk that raising classical efficiency may result in greater, not less, depletion. Similarly the paper by Medellín-Azuara et al. models water consumption at the basin level using the formulation of ‘effective water’. On the other hand, the paper by Lankford argues that ‘classical irrigation efficiency’ losses affect local irrigation scheduling, and as such, the concept should be employed by water managers and policy advisers. These two viewpoints appear to be at odds with one another, but as Lankford suggests, they work at different scales and so could combine to assist in better understanding efficiency and productivity – a point echoed by van Halsema and Vincent. A number of papers in the issue discuss concerns over definitions of efficiency and associated terms such as ‘waste’ and ‘losses’. The discussion reflects the consternation shown by other authors (e.g. Perry, 2007; Seckler et al., 2003) over the lax deployment of
0378-3774/$ – see front matter © 2012 Published by Elsevier B.V. doi:10.1016/j.agwat.2012.03.005
terms. Thus authors Pereira et al. (this issue) formulate a framework of terms specified by equations, usefully distinguishing between losses and waste. The paper by van Halsema and Vincent similarly examines how terms translate across scales and in doing so they provide the historical background to the development of efficiency thinking over the last 50 years. Furthermore, a central question in irrigation efficiency is how and why different models of water accounting lead to different measures of performance and contrasting policy options. Karimov et al. pursue the benefits of basin accounting using IWMI methodology (Molden and Sakthivadivel, 1999). This important exercise reveals where water can be saved at the basin level and supports the argument that the science of irrigation efficiency must be tested at multiple levels to remove contradictions of local level savings increasing depletion at the basin level. Lankford argues that accounting locally for water using a classical irrigation efficiency formulation is related to water scheduling and timing – leading to productivity gains. As Karimov et al. reveal, the inclusion of groundwater has implications for local and basin efficiency accounting. The concerns about efficiency ‘freeing up’ water for allocation relate to how water moves from the denominator (less recovered water) to the numerator (greater consumption) in the efficiency ratio. This shift explains why in some circumstances, scientists should be sceptical of claims surrounding efficiency in the context of allocation. Medellín-Azuara et al. assume in their model that higher irrigation efficiency gives greater evapotranspiration, tallying with arguments made by Ward and Pulido-Velázquez, 2008. However Lankford draws attention to how consumption is controlled for, such as the regulation of the abstraction rate, or whether non-beneficial evaporation and non-recovered losses move to the (beneficial) numerator, rather than to recovered losses. Vos and Boelens also share their concerns regarding normative interventions designed to engender greater allocative efficiency predicated on false notions of a highly controllable irrigation sector (i.e. through water rights). Similarly Knox et al. draw up distinctions between farmer’s views on efficiency compared to the instrumental views on water rights that the water regulator in England and Wales holds. In several papers, Vos and Boelens, Lopez-Gunn et al., van Halsema and Vincent observe that a modernisation narrative feeds national policies on the irrigated sector which in turn depart from a technological characterisation of systems in decline, suffering from low irrigation efficiency. Such policies are defined by a modernisation rhetoric in three ways. First is the idea that drip or sprinkler systems are more efficient than canal or bucket technologies, and second that canal-lining and computer aided, automatic control
2
Preface / Agricultural Water Management 108 (2012) 1–2
on canal networks constitute modern infrastructure. While both might function well in certain environments, there are alternative improvements that can be made to existing systems. Related to the two modernising ideas mentioned, is a third; that of training farmers in water management, remaking them as ‘efficient users’ of water. Yet paradoxically, casting farmers as inefficient (recorded by Vos and Boelens, Lopez-Gunn et al., Lankford, Knox et al.) may undermine partnerships to solve either national-level concerns regarding food production or local-level concerns regarding toptail water sharing. Tangible and important correlations between irrigation efficiency and the consumption of other resources are illustrated by Karimi et al. in their analysis of the energy usage in accessing and distributing groundwater in Iran. Their argument is that reducing the consumption of water saves energy. This supports the idea that classical irrigation efficiency has utility beyond its engineering design function and should be considered in a wider societal context. By connecting irrigation efficiency to other resources, and to an ever-changing context of water supply and demand, it is possible to judge an absolutist ‘hydrologist’ viewpoint on water accounting has for understanding irrigation performance (van Halsema and Vincent, this volume). Therefore, Foster and Perry’s (2010) call for proper hydrological accounting is useful in so much as other livelihood, system properties, economic and resource implications are excluded from this. Lopez-Gunn et al. discuss how farmer’s livelihoods are changed by the adoption of modernised, on-demand, distribution infrastructure. By including these parameters, irrigation efficiency has to be approached with specific reference to the particular circumstances of the irrigators, system and basin being studied. Having modelled a variety of contextual factors, MedellínAzuara et al. also make the same point in their conclusion. The papers in this issue characterise elements of a political ecology of irrigation efficiency – a critique of the framings and narratives of environmental governance and management through the co-production of actors, knowledge, theory, policy and practice. Political ecology theory recognises the notion that ‘environmental truths’ compete with and replace each other. We can see through the literature how the concept of ‘irrigation efficiency’ has evolved over the past fifty years, reflecting the shifting and multiple emphases placed on irrigation as an agronomic input, engineering activity, socio-technical food production system and major consumer of freshwater. In its classical efficiency form, its utility to speak to water allocation has rightly been questioned by scientists. Yet we can continue to recognise its scientific and societal application for other spheres of water management. Nevertheless, the classical form has been misemployed politically for the purpose of soliciting support for policy and fiscal expenditure to deal with falsely low efficiencies (see Lopez-Gunn et al.), and worryingly, the ‘effective form’ continues not to be recognised as widely as it should (Molden et al., 2010). The authors of this edition hope that with
unfolding concerns around food, water, climate change and freshwater biodiversity, the topic of consumptive and non-consumptive use of irrigation water, and the location of constituents such as ‘waste’, ‘losses’ and ‘efficiency’, mediated by engineers, scientists and farmers, will be of profound significance in the next decade. On the other hand, new spending on the rehabilitation and expansion of irrigation that fails to incorporate appropriate efficiency theory, measurement and practice is unconscionable. Acknowledgements I wish to thank the editors of the journal Agricultural Water Management for agreeing to host this special issue and the authors of the contributing papers for their patience and diligence as well as for comments on an earlier version of this preface. Also my heartfelt thanks to the anonymous reviewers for their work in improving all the papers. References Blaikie, P., Brookfield, H., 1987. Land Degradation and Society. Methuen, London. Foster, S.S.D., Perry, C.J., 2010. Improving groundwater resource accounting in irrigated areas: a prerequisite for promoting sustainable use. Hydrogeology Journal 18, 291–294. Jensen, M., 2007. Beyond irrigation efficiency. Irrigation Science 25, 233–245. Molden, D., Sakthivadivel, R., 1999. Water accounting to assess use and productivity of water. International Journal of Water Resources Development 15 (1–2), 55–71. Molden, D., Oweis, T., Steduto, P., Bindraban, P., Hanjra, M.A., Kijne, J., 2010. Improving agricultural water productivity: between optimism and caution. Agricultural Water Management 97, 528–535. Perry, C.J., 2007. Efficient irrigation; inefficient communication; flawed recommendations. Irrigation and Drainage 56, 367–378. Rocheleau, D.E, 2008. Political ecology in the key of policy: from chains of explanation to webs of relation. Geoforum 39, 716–727. Seckler, D.W., 1996. The New Era of Water Resources Management: From “Dry” to “Wet” Water Savings. International Irrigation Management Institute, Colombo, Sri Lanka. Seckler, D., Molden, D., Sakthivadivel, R., 2003. The concept of efficiency in water resources management and policy. In: Kijne, J.W., Barker, R., Molden. D. (Eds.), Water Productivity in Agriculture: Limits and Opportunities for Improvement. Wallingford, UK. Ward, F.A., Pulido-Velázquez, M., 2008. Water conservation in irrigation can increase water use. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 105 (47), 18215–18220. Willardson, L.S., Allen, R.G., Frederiksen, H., 1994. Eliminating Irrigation Efficiencies. In: USCID 13th Tech. Conf., Denver, Colorado, 19–22 October.
Bruce Lankford ∗ School of Development Studies, University of East Anglia, Norwich, NR4 7TJ, United Kingdom ∗ Tel.:
+44 1603593378; fax: +44 1603451999. E-mail address: [email protected]
Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect
Agricultural Water Management journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/agwat
Preface
Towards a political ecology of irrigation efficiency and productivity
The provenance of this issue stems from an ICID.UK seminar entitled “Towards a political ecology of irrigation and water use efficiency and productivity” held in November 2008. One reason for calling the meeting arose out of my concerns that ‘irrigation efficiency’ as a term, and as a means to reflect on water management, was being marginalised (Willardson et al., 1994; Seckler, 1996; Perry, 2007; Jensen, 2007) suggesting that irrigation efficiency has limited utility for irrigation management and should be dropped from usage. Yet the intention of the London meeting, and now, is not to refute the idea we should treat irrigation efficiency with scepticism or to form a consensus on how scientists and policy-makers should address efficiency and productivity. On the contrary, the objective is to reveal the diversity of views within the seemingly mundane area of irrigation efficiency and productivity and to link these to political and societal concerns over resource governance. While there were no calls for contributors to write on ‘the political ecology of irrigation efficiency’, perhaps nearest is the paper in this issue by Boelens and Vos. This, plus a lack of trustworthy field metrics on efficiency (compared to modelled and estimated figures), guides the somewhat hesitant title of this preface. Nevertheless, one can still characterise this collection of papers as a ‘political ecology’ analysis in the form of Rocheleau’s (2008) ‘critical perspectives’ characterisation of Blaikie and Brookfield’s (1987) work comprising the accommodation of methods, scales, objectives and actors in a social and biophysical study of science, power relations, politics and resource theory applied to questions of environmental governance. For example, the two paradigms of irrigation efficiency reflect the unresolved scientific and methodological nature of the debate. The paper by Pereira et al. supports ‘effective irrigation efficiency’ arguments that water losses are recaptured in the basin, with the risk that raising classical efficiency may result in greater, not less, depletion. Similarly the paper by Medellín-Azuara et al. models water consumption at the basin level using the formulation of ‘effective water’. On the other hand, the paper by Lankford argues that ‘classical irrigation efficiency’ losses affect local irrigation scheduling, and as such, the concept should be employed by water managers and policy advisers. These two viewpoints appear to be at odds with one another, but as Lankford suggests, they work at different scales and so could combine to assist in better understanding efficiency and productivity – a point echoed by van Halsema and Vincent. A number of papers in the issue discuss concerns over definitions of efficiency and associated terms such as ‘waste’ and ‘losses’. The discussion reflects the consternation shown by other authors (e.g. Perry, 2007; Seckler et al., 2003) over the lax deployment of
0378-3774/$ – see front matter © 2012 Published by Elsevier B.V. doi:10.1016/j.agwat.2012.03.005
terms. Thus authors Pereira et al. (this issue) formulate a framework of terms specified by equations, usefully distinguishing between losses and waste. The paper by van Halsema and Vincent similarly examines how terms translate across scales and in doing so they provide the historical background to the development of efficiency thinking over the last 50 years. Furthermore, a central question in irrigation efficiency is how and why different models of water accounting lead to different measures of performance and contrasting policy options. Karimov et al. pursue the benefits of basin accounting using IWMI methodology (Molden and Sakthivadivel, 1999). This important exercise reveals where water can be saved at the basin level and supports the argument that the science of irrigation efficiency must be tested at multiple levels to remove contradictions of local level savings increasing depletion at the basin level. Lankford argues that accounting locally for water using a classical irrigation efficiency formulation is related to water scheduling and timing – leading to productivity gains. As Karimov et al. reveal, the inclusion of groundwater has implications for local and basin efficiency accounting. The concerns about efficiency ‘freeing up’ water for allocation relate to how water moves from the denominator (less recovered water) to the numerator (greater consumption) in the efficiency ratio. This shift explains why in some circumstances, scientists should be sceptical of claims surrounding efficiency in the context of allocation. Medellín-Azuara et al. assume in their model that higher irrigation efficiency gives greater evapotranspiration, tallying with arguments made by Ward and Pulido-Velázquez, 2008. However Lankford draws attention to how consumption is controlled for, such as the regulation of the abstraction rate, or whether non-beneficial evaporation and non-recovered losses move to the (beneficial) numerator, rather than to recovered losses. Vos and Boelens also share their concerns regarding normative interventions designed to engender greater allocative efficiency predicated on false notions of a highly controllable irrigation sector (i.e. through water rights). Similarly Knox et al. draw up distinctions between farmer’s views on efficiency compared to the instrumental views on water rights that the water regulator in England and Wales holds. In several papers, Vos and Boelens, Lopez-Gunn et al., van Halsema and Vincent observe that a modernisation narrative feeds national policies on the irrigated sector which in turn depart from a technological characterisation of systems in decline, suffering from low irrigation efficiency. Such policies are defined by a modernisation rhetoric in three ways. First is the idea that drip or sprinkler systems are more efficient than canal or bucket technologies, and second that canal-lining and computer aided, automatic control
2
Preface / Agricultural Water Management 108 (2012) 1–2
on canal networks constitute modern infrastructure. While both might function well in certain environments, there are alternative improvements that can be made to existing systems. Related to the two modernising ideas mentioned, is a third; that of training farmers in water management, remaking them as ‘efficient users’ of water. Yet paradoxically, casting farmers as inefficient (recorded by Vos and Boelens, Lopez-Gunn et al., Lankford, Knox et al.) may undermine partnerships to solve either national-level concerns regarding food production or local-level concerns regarding toptail water sharing. Tangible and important correlations between irrigation efficiency and the consumption of other resources are illustrated by Karimi et al. in their analysis of the energy usage in accessing and distributing groundwater in Iran. Their argument is that reducing the consumption of water saves energy. This supports the idea that classical irrigation efficiency has utility beyond its engineering design function and should be considered in a wider societal context. By connecting irrigation efficiency to other resources, and to an ever-changing context of water supply and demand, it is possible to judge an absolutist ‘hydrologist’ viewpoint on water accounting has for understanding irrigation performance (van Halsema and Vincent, this volume). Therefore, Foster and Perry’s (2010) call for proper hydrological accounting is useful in so much as other livelihood, system properties, economic and resource implications are excluded from this. Lopez-Gunn et al. discuss how farmer’s livelihoods are changed by the adoption of modernised, on-demand, distribution infrastructure. By including these parameters, irrigation efficiency has to be approached with specific reference to the particular circumstances of the irrigators, system and basin being studied. Having modelled a variety of contextual factors, MedellínAzuara et al. also make the same point in their conclusion. The papers in this issue characterise elements of a political ecology of irrigation efficiency – a critique of the framings and narratives of environmental governance and management through the co-production of actors, knowledge, theory, policy and practice. Political ecology theory recognises the notion that ‘environmental truths’ compete with and replace each other. We can see through the literature how the concept of ‘irrigation efficiency’ has evolved over the past fifty years, reflecting the shifting and multiple emphases placed on irrigation as an agronomic input, engineering activity, socio-technical food production system and major consumer of freshwater. In its classical efficiency form, its utility to speak to water allocation has rightly been questioned by scientists. Yet we can continue to recognise its scientific and societal application for other spheres of water management. Nevertheless, the classical form has been misemployed politically for the purpose of soliciting support for policy and fiscal expenditure to deal with falsely low efficiencies (see Lopez-Gunn et al.), and worryingly, the ‘effective form’ continues not to be recognised as widely as it should (Molden et al., 2010). The authors of this edition hope that with
unfolding concerns around food, water, climate change and freshwater biodiversity, the topic of consumptive and non-consumptive use of irrigation water, and the location of constituents such as ‘waste’, ‘losses’ and ‘efficiency’, mediated by engineers, scientists and farmers, will be of profound significance in the next decade. On the other hand, new spending on the rehabilitation and expansion of irrigation that fails to incorporate appropriate efficiency theory, measurement and practice is unconscionable. Acknowledgements I wish to thank the editors of the journal Agricultural Water Management for agreeing to host this special issue and the authors of the contributing papers for their patience and diligence as well as for comments on an earlier version of this preface. Also my heartfelt thanks to the anonymous reviewers for their work in improving all the papers. References Blaikie, P., Brookfield, H., 1987. Land Degradation and Society. Methuen, London. Foster, S.S.D., Perry, C.J., 2010. Improving groundwater resource accounting in irrigated areas: a prerequisite for promoting sustainable use. Hydrogeology Journal 18, 291–294. Jensen, M., 2007. Beyond irrigation efficiency. Irrigation Science 25, 233–245. Molden, D., Sakthivadivel, R., 1999. Water accounting to assess use and productivity of water. International Journal of Water Resources Development 15 (1–2), 55–71. Molden, D., Oweis, T., Steduto, P., Bindraban, P., Hanjra, M.A., Kijne, J., 2010. Improving agricultural water productivity: between optimism and caution. Agricultural Water Management 97, 528–535. Perry, C.J., 2007. Efficient irrigation; inefficient communication; flawed recommendations. Irrigation and Drainage 56, 367–378. Rocheleau, D.E, 2008. Political ecology in the key of policy: from chains of explanation to webs of relation. Geoforum 39, 716–727. Seckler, D.W., 1996. The New Era of Water Resources Management: From “Dry” to “Wet” Water Savings. International Irrigation Management Institute, Colombo, Sri Lanka. Seckler, D., Molden, D., Sakthivadivel, R., 2003. The concept of efficiency in water resources management and policy. In: Kijne, J.W., Barker, R., Molden. D. (Eds.), Water Productivity in Agriculture: Limits and Opportunities for Improvement. Wallingford, UK. Ward, F.A., Pulido-Velázquez, M., 2008. Water conservation in irrigation can increase water use. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 105 (47), 18215–18220. Willardson, L.S., Allen, R.G., Frederiksen, H., 1994. Eliminating Irrigation Efficiencies. In: USCID 13th Tech. Conf., Denver, Colorado, 19–22 October.
Bruce Lankford ∗ School of Development Studies, University of East Anglia, Norwich, NR4 7TJ, United Kingdom ∗ Tel.:
+44 1603593378; fax: +44 1603451999. E-mail address: [email protected]